Chapter 6
Gabby
Gabby rushed out the door and almost broke her neck on a slippery spot on the sidewalk. It had rained overnight and the temperatures had dipped down to just about freezing, so black ice was sure to be covering the sidewalks and the roads in some capacity. Great. That wasn’t going to slow her down or anything. Just her luck she would get a cabbie who didn’t know how to do winter driving.
Gabby regained herself and ignored the pain in her ankle that might be suggesting a slight sprain, but hopefully just a twist. She really had to get going. It had been the morning from hell, and last night wasn’t too great either. She’d almost overslept. Gabby was up late finding someone that could come care for her father. Her aunt Shelly had called and told her that she had car trouble and couldn’t make it over, but Gabby secretly thought it was her back that was giving her trouble and she didn’t want to admit it. Gabby rushed to find a caregiver that was somewhat affordable and could come last minute to watch her father. Once the woman arrived in the morning she gave her all the instructions and ran out of the apartment.
She knew that if she did not make it to work today then Logan Brower would surely sue her father and force him to pay for the damaged suit. The man was just that kind of a guy. She hated that type of guy, but she could not stop lusting after this man. What in the world did that say about her?
Now she was trying desperately to flag down a cab to take her to this man’s office where she would be put to work doing God only knew what. She was so nervous that she’d barely slept last night. After having to find someone last minute combined with her nerves about Logan she stayed up most of the night worrying. That was why she had almost missed her alarm. If she hadn’t set multiples then she wouldn’t have been up in time. The third alarm was the charm it turned out.
She finally flagged down a cab and off she went towards the office of Logan Brower. She’d done a bit of research on her temporary employer and she was surprised by what she’d found out. Apparently, he was the biggest real estate mogul in the city. The guy was worth billions. Not bad for a man who was barely thirty years old. It was impressive to say the least. And it made her like him even more. Not because of the money and the jet setting lifestyle he must have surely led, but because of the strength and the passion that amounting to such a success from fairly humble beginnings represented. She admired anyone who worked hard and accomplished their goals that way.
It was the type of guy she’d always envisioned for herself.
But then again, every woman in the city probably wanted him all to herself. What chance did a woman like her really have anyway?
The cab ride from her dad’s place to the middle of downtown only took about twenty minutes and she was happy to know that she was going to make good time anyway. Well, she was going to get there barely on time. But for Gabby that was pretty good. She was the type of girl who for whatever reason was always late everywhere she went, especially if it was something important she had to do.
It was a sickness really.
Gabby arrived to see a huge skyscraper standing in front of her. She couldn’t help but feel a bit thrilled about entering such a huge building. It was almost as if she’d finally made it to somewhere really great. But she had to remind herself that she had not really made it anywhere yet. This was basically slave labor to pay off a three-thousand-dollar suit. She didn’t even know how much money she was supposed to be making per hour, if she even be making anything. Or maybe he was going to go by task completed. She had not discussed any of this with him.
Gabby had wanted to call and see if she could speak to Logan Brower in person about this and get some questions answered, but she chickened out. Which judging by everything she’d read about Logan was probably the right decision. The guy was known for his hostility. He’d almost been sued by several paparazzi photographers when he engaged in some altercations with them, but luckily, he hadn’t stepped over the line there yet. Most people agreed he was a ticking time bomb about to go off.
Gabby didn’t know why, but she found all of this behavior about this man rather intriguing. The more she learned the more she wanted to know and the less information it seemed she was able to find out. He was a reclusive man with a lot of secrets apparently.
She closed her eyes and mentally prepared herself for entrance into a world she knew nothing about. It was frightening, exciting, and very scary all rolled into one. A part of her hoped that Logan was so impressed with her work and that she might actually get to know him enough that he would like her as a person, that way he would just forget about the whole thing and call it done after a few days. But then again, she wanted to spend as much time with this enigmatic mystery man as she could. Maybe she would even meet some contacts here that might help her get a permanent job somewhere else.
All of these hopes were instantly dashed the moment she stepped off the elevator. She had been instructed via a voicemail left by a lady called Laura to enter the building, go straight ahead to the elevators, take them to floor nine and then to turn right the second she turned off the elevators.
The hallways were silent and there was nothing to see. A wall stood right in front of her with two large double doorways on either side of her. She was told to go right so she went through those doors where she entered a hallway full of what appeared to be empty office cubicles.
She saw no one. It was creepy to put it mildly and she felt the hair on her arms standing up as a chill swept over her. Gabby hugged herself tightly and started to walk down the hallway looking left and right but seeing nothing except empty cubicles. There were no people. No decorations. No computers or office materials of any kind. No file cabinets, chairs, folders, staplers—there was nothing there.
“Hello?” Gabby called out. Her voice was way louder than she was used to and it seemed to echo a bit in the close air around her.
There was no response. Was she in the right place? Gabby pulled the business card out of her pocket. She’d written her instructions on the back of the card. She looked at it carefully and it all matched up. She was in the right place.
But where was everybody? What was going on? Was she being set up for something? A bad feeling was starting to come over Gabby and she swallowed hard as she tried to keep her mind steady and her will strong.
“Hello? Is anybody here?” She called again, louder this time. Her voice cut through the deafening silence around her clearly.
After a moment of no answer Gabby decided that enough was enough. She was going to find out what was going on around here.
She marched quickly up and down all of the aisles, seeing no one, occasionally opening a desk drawer on the cubicle. There was nothing there. It was all empty.
“Screw this,” Gabby said.
She turned around and started to march towards the doors.
“Hey!”
The voice came from behind her. It was loud and way too close for comfort. Gabby spun around prepared to slug someone who might have been trying to hurt her.
Coming towards her walking with big goofy grins on their faces were two nerdy looking guys in their thirties walking casually down the hallway.
“We’ve been expecting you,” the shorter one said. “I’m Brian.” He held out his hand for her to shake.
Gabby shook his hand nervously. She was not fully convinced that all of this was legit yet.
“I’m Troy,” the other man said offering her his hand.
She shook it trying not to recoil from his greasy palm. He did not seem to notice.
“Ok, I thought I was in the wrong place,” Gabby said. “Where is everybody?”
“Oh, this is the way Mr. Brower likes it, at least on this floor. He does not like noise of any sort so he makes sure everything is quiet on some of the floors he does most of his work in when he is here,” Brian said.
“Oh, ok. I heard he was a bit eccentric,” Gabby replied. “Where is he by the way? I’d really like to speak with him.”
Brian and Troy looked at each other fearful for a moment.
“Oh, I don’t know where he is,” Troy said. “He is a very busy guy; he just pops in and out at random times.”
“Yeah. He is a tough guy to track down,” Brian said with a goofy grin that seemed to be his trademark.
“But he told us all about you here and if you’ll follow us we will be glad to put you to work,” Brian said.
He led the way down to the end of the hall and then they hung a right down another hallway with a small alcove at the end of it where four desks were set up.
Gabby rubbed her hand across the smooth grain of the wooden desk. It reminded her so much of being in school. So much time spent memorizing useless facts that would be of little use in the real corporate world, but had been deemed so important back then.
There was a large stack of paperwork on the right side of the desk with several file folders full of documents.
“Ok, Mr. Bower would like you to organize this and make sure all of the papers are filed properly and in the proper organizational sequence by client and property,” Brian said. “Do you think you can do that?”
Gabby sighed. That was an insane stack of paperwork. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Great,” Troy said. “If you need anything we are in the office right next door.”
“Ok,” Gabby said.
The guys started to walk away but then Brian turned back to her. “By the way, we almost forgot to mention something very important. When you came off the elevators you saw the door to the right hallway and the door to the left hallway. It’s very important that you don’t go down the left hallway. Only authorized personnel are allowed over there.”
Gabby looked at both men inquisitively to see if they were pulling her chain. Both of them looked deadly serious. Gone were the jovial, nerdy personas they had displayed a moment ago. Right then they were staring at her awaiting her confirmation of understanding with a mix of concern and stern authority.
“Um, ok. Sure,” Gabby said.
She was about to ask why the door wasn’t just locked then, but the guys were gone, assumingly back to their offices.
What in the world was going on here?
Gabby settled into filing and sorting the paperwork, which was the most mind-numbing experience on the face of the planet she was now convinced. It was the corporate equivalent of Chinese water torture.
After about an hour she started to get a little stir crazy. She kept thinking about what was on the other side of those doors to the left that she was now forbidden to touch. Brian and Troy never should have told her to absolutely not go there; that was the clearest invitation they could have sent her because it was her nature to go against the grain sometimes, especially if she was forbidden to do something.
She couldn’t help but wonder what they were trying to hide. It was probably nothing. It was just some silly rule that Logan or someone had created to sound powerful and inspire fear and obedience in the underlings. Speaking of which, where was he? She was under the impression that she was supposed to be working for him. But it seemed that she was doing menial tasks for Brian and Trevor, not for Logan.
He’d probably just told them to keep her busy with something until she paid off her debt, whenever that was going to be. The idea of doing this kind of boring indentured servitude for six or seven weeks was suddenly becoming a reality in her mind that made her want to puke. She was almost willing to just talk to Shelly at this point and then pay Shelly back when she had the money.
But again, she did not want to disappoint her dad. Even if he was not able to cognitively process what was happening at times, he was still her dad and she would treat him the way she knew he would always expect anyone to treat him before his illness.
Gabby continued to file for a few more hours. It was not so bad once she located the coffee machine and kept the caffeine pouring into her. She popped in her headphones and listened to music while she worked. It was kind of like zoning out. By lunchtime she was beginning to think she might actually make it and she had accomplished quite a bit of work.
Brian told her to take an hour for lunch when she was ready just after noon. She found a stopping space and said bye to him to let him know she was leaving. As she reached the elevators the left side hallway suddenly reached out towards her. It was looming in front of her as if calling her name, goading her into disobeying orders to see what was really on the other side.
She glanced down the hall to make sure no one was watching her and then took the plunge walking through the left side hallway.
Gabby was instantly greeted with a long hallway that seemed to go on forever. It was exactly like the other side as far as she could tell. There were a bunch of empty cubicles with no signs of life. But it was all still obsessively clean and neat somehow. It was emptiness but it almost screamed out that it should stay empty because it was so pristine the way it was.
Maybe she was already starting to go mad from being here.
Gabby saw a work area at the end of the hall that actually looked like it showed signs of life. There were computers, file folders, papers stacked around. It looked almost like an actual office.
But the workers were gone. Maybe they’d gone to lunch already, too. She hoped that she might meet them. They had to be more interesting than Brian and Troy. Those guys were about as funny as a car accident.
As she rounded the corner in front of the front desk area she noticed a large, thick, double door at the end of the hallway. It was at the end of a long corridor that had nothing on either side. It reminded her of a hospital in certain wings where hallways seemed to go to on forever, except they led to a door that opened up to go to another set of double doors.
Gabby so far had not found anything too interesting and she wondered why this section was supposedly banned from her. And that was another question. Was it banned only to her? Or was it banned to all certain level employees?
Then the idea hit her. It was like a funny little revelation.
This was Logan’s office. The big double doors, the long hallway, and the assistance just right outside. This had to be his office.
It was probably locked. He was probably not there. After all, he did seem impossible to track down. Which was plausible for a man of his wealth and prestige. He was an owner of a huge real estate company after all.
But she had to know.
Before she realized what she was doing, Gabby found her feet carrying her slowly down the hallway to the doors in front of her. She was going to try that office. She had to see it. She had to know where his lair was. Gabby giggled at the idea of Logan residing in a lair. But it seemed to suit a super alpha male like him.
He would probably have her skinned alive if he found her, but if she got away with it how cool would that be.
Gabby could not resist herself as she reached for the door handle and pulled.